Author: Little Dorrit

Eve’s Pudding

Little Dorrit1 Comment

This recipe comes from Catherine Dickens, the wife of Charles Dickens. While her husband is better known for his writing career, Catherine Dickens made her own foray into authorship with the cookbook What Shall We Have for Dinner?. The book was first published sometime before 1851 (the date of the first edition is unknown), and was reissued in several revised editions over the next few years. Catherine published her book under what is probably the best pseudonym ever – Lady Maria Clutterbuck – the name of the character she had portrayed in an amateur theatrical production of the play Used Up.

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Chocolate Chip Honey Cookies

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Last year, I made Ruth Wakefield’s original recipe for Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies. Invented in the 1930s, these cookies became so popular that by 1939 Nestlé developed chocolate chips specifically for use in the cookies. Nestlé continued to promote chocolate chips and chocolate chip cookies during World War II, such as in this poster suggesting that a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect gift to send a soldier.

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A Cheap Seed Cake

Little Dorrit1 Comment

“It was the pleasantest tea-table in the world. Miss Clarissa presided. I cut and handed the sweet seed-cake — the little sisters had a bird-like fondness for picking up seeds and pecking up sugar; Miss Lavinia looked on with benignant patronage, as if our happy love were all her work; and we were perfectly contented with ourselves and one another.”

-Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850.

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Spice Roll

Little Dorrit2 Comments

This recipe comes from The Settlement Cookbook, first published in 1901. The book was initially created as a charity cookbook to raise funds for the Jewish Settlement House in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was so successful that the proceeds of the first two editions were enough to purchase a site for the new Settlement House. The cookbook presents a variety of recipes influenced by German, Eastern European, and Jewish cooking, reflecting the culinary traditions of the immigrants served by the Settlement House.

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A Christmas Cookey

Little Dorrit1 Comment

Amelia Simmons’ 1796 cookbook American Cookery, the first cookbook written by an American to be published in the United States, was also one of the first English-language cookbooks to use the word “cookie.” While British cookbooks used the terms “small cakes” or “biscuits,” in America the word “cookie,” derived from the Dutch word “koekje,” came to be used instead.

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